


Stars

by Lothiriel84



Series: Little Bang [2]
Category: MarsCorp (Podcast)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Mad Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 21:21:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14410809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lothiriel84/pseuds/Lothiriel84
Summary: Keeping watch in the night.





	Stars

Truth be told, he’d completely forgotten about it. He spent the first few months of his incarceration just lying there, staring at the ceiling, and wishing he’d been allowed to share Colin’s fate, whatever that might be. It was only when he woke up in the middle of the night with the feeling of a small round object pulsing angrily from where it was pressed against his side that he finally remembered.

He took the marble-universe out of his pocket, mesmerised by the way it glistened in the dark, held it in his palm for a long moment. It felt heavier than it did in his memory; and if his senses were not deceived, it had also grown in size, albeit only a little. The ghost of a smile, pale and uncertain, touched his lips, before he pocketed it again and rolled over to try and get a few more hours of fitful sleep.

After that, he started taking it out every so often, whenever he was particularly tired, or depressed, or simply overwhelmed. He would curl up in a ball on the floor, and stare at his pocket universe, which he had grown to consider as his kindred spirit – small and forgotten, a forlorn speck of dust in a much bigger and cruel universe. Only, the marble kept growing over the years, until it simply couldn’t fit in his pocket anymore, and he had to hide it among the several exercise balls of various sizes and colours that littered the floor of the former yoga room.

Thank the Shareholders neither the service robots nor the occasional Orange on cleaning duties ever paid too much attention to the decor of his makeshift prison cell; solitary confinement was starting to take its toll on his mind, and the last thing he needed was for his one source of comfort to be taken away from him, leaving no barrier between him and the slow, inevitable descent into madness.

By the ninth year of his prison sentence, his miniature universe had grown so big he could – with some difficulty and a great deal of physical discomfort – wriggle his way into it, limb by limb, until he would find himself cocooned in a daze of nebulae and constellations, the chains around his wrists the only connection with the outside universe.

Luckily enough, orb-universe was noticeably bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside, so he could just curl up between a galaxy and a cluster of stars, and let the soft background buzzing sound lull him into a deep and dreamless sleep.


End file.
